The Centerfold

By Reaona Hemmingway

     The night clerk watched Janet Wharton enter the convenience store. His hand hovered over the silent alarm button. She didn’t blame him. Not every customer wore a trench coat and sunglasses at one o’clock in the morning. He expected her to rob the place. Instead, she grabbed all the plastic covered magazines from the top shelf and hurried to the counter.
     “How many?” he asked.
     “Eleven.” She slid a hundred dollar bill into the tray beneath the bullet proof glass while he rung up the sale. As soon as he gave her the change, she grabbed the magazines and left.
     Nine stops later, Janet’s trunk contained every copy of For His Eyes Only’s November issue, except one. With the election five days away, she couldn’t afford to have those pictures hit the streets. Thankfully, Mitch worked for the delivery company Lindmeyer Printing contracted to distribute the magazine to convenience stores in town. Thankfully, the magazine’s owner was arrested for drug trafficking three hours ago, which meant no reprints.
     Mitch waited in the garage when she arrived home. As soon as she parked the car, he hit the garage door button.
     “Mom, you look terrible,” he said as she climbed out of the car.
     She bent down and looked at her makeup in the side view mirror. Mascara was streaked and smudged from where she rubbed her eyes several times during the night.
     “Not as terrible as I’d look tomorrow if you hadn’t let your hormones get curious and bought one of those magazines halfway through your delivery route.” She grinned at how red his cheeks turned. It wasn’t every college sophomore who opened a nudie magazine to find his mother the object of male lust. “What did you do with the rest?”
     “They’re in my closet. I sure hope my boss doesn’t fire me when he finds out I didn’t deliver the rest of them with the other magazines on my route.”
     “Just tell him you were protecting his reputation after hearing about Lindmeyer’s arrest on the radio.”
     His face lit up with a smile. “That might work. Are you going to tell Dad?”
     “I have to. Hell, he’s the one who took the stupid picture. That’s how we met twenty-five years ago. I went to a fraternity party, drank too much vodka spiked lemonade, and agreed to let him take my picture in the buff. How Sly Lindmeyer got hold of the negatives, I’ll never know. I watched your father destroy all the film and photographs from that frat party years ago.”
     The door to the kitchen opened and Gerald Wharton walked into the garage. “What’s going on out here? Why aren’t you two in bed?”
     In his blue silk pajamas and plaid flannel bathrobe, he didn’t look much like the randy photography hobbyist who seduced her into taking her clothes off in his bedroom at the fraternity house. He looked like what he was, an overworked district attorney up past his normal bedtime.
     Janet opened the trunk and grabbed a magazine. “We were just discussing when to hold the bonfire. Your job tomorrow, Mr. D.A., is to find a way to get the proofs, negatives, and printing plates from Lindmeyer Printing without raising suspicions.”
     She watched the confused look on Gerald’s face change to one of horror when he opened the magazine. The color left his face and his hands shook. “How the hell?”
     “That’s what I’d like to know,” Janet said, patting him on the arm. “Your bid for District Court Judge is going to get broadsided if we don’t keep these pictures off the streets between now and next Tuesday. Like I said, if you don’t come back with every last remaining copy of my picture, you can kiss your career goodbye.” She stifled a yawn. “As for me, I’m going to bed.”

     Within minutes after entering Lindmeyer Printing’s establishment, Gerald Wharton found the galley proofs, printing plates, negatives, and thirty sample copies of For His Eyes Only’s November issue. First, he carefully removed the centerfolds from the magazines and then, using skills learned during his college poker playing years, slipped every image of Janet inside his briefcase.
     As District Attorney, it wasn’t difficult convincing the Chief of Police to allow him to accompany the investigating team on this evidence search. His participation would show his constituents how serious he was about punishing criminals from either side of the bench.
     “How’s it going, Mr. Wharton?”
     Startled, Gerald looked up to see a police officer standing in the doorway of the storage room. “Fine. Have you found anything significant yet?”
     “Not much. Clancy found some receipts for chemicals, some of which are used in making methamphetamines. Other than that, we’re running dry.”
     Gerald flipped another page in the November issue’s file and blinked. Did he dare mention what he just found before completing his search through the file? He didn’t have a choice if he wanted Lindmeyer to stay behind bars.
     “Tell Clancy and Ingman that I just found evidence of child pornography.”
     After the officer left the room, he pulled the picture from the file. His stomach felt raw with knowing the identity of the sixteen-year-old girl. Sure enough, when he flipped open the magazine he found the same picture on page sixty-two. How on earth was he going to explain the thirty missing centerfolds or why his wife bought up every retail copy without confessing what he’d just done to protect his campaign?
     He shuffled through the file as fast as he could and felt relieved when he didn’t find any further copies of Janet’s picture. He stacked the photographs, negatives, and printing plates for page sixty-two on the table next to the stack of magazine samples.
     “What you got there?” Clancy asked when he entered the room.
     “Nude photographs of Sandra Mandrake that were published in the November issue of For His Eyes Only,” Gerald said, pointing to the stack.
     Ingman slapped him on the shoulder. “Nice work, Wharton. You’ve ensured that sleaze ball Lindmeyer stays in prison until he’s wearing false teeth and knocked your opponent off the judicial ballot all in one swoop.”
     Gerald shook his head. “We’ve got to keep her identity out of the papers.”
     “You’re kidding, right?”
     “She’s sixteen and obviously needs counseling. Knowing the way kids think, this was probably her way of getting her parent’s attention. Ruining Mandrake’s run for the bench won’t solve her problems. More than likely, it will make them worse and ruin the kid’s future entirely.”
     Clancy nodded his agreement. “As always, you’re right. Under the safeguards of child protection, we can charge Lindmeyer with child pornography without dragging Mandrake’s name through the press.”
     “I want to go with you to break the news to Mandrake,” Gerald said, as he nervously watched Ingman flip through a copy of the magazine. “With the way we’ve been at each other’s throats on legal issues during this campaign, I want to make sure he knows any leak won’t come from my direction.”
     Ingman bagged and tagged the evidence along with one magazine copy before they headed out the door. “If you ask me,” he said, “it’s not much of a nudie magazine. Heck, it doesn’t even have a centerfold.”

     Gerald sat quietly in the back seat during the ride to Mandrake’s office. Clancy skimmed through a copy of the magazine while Ingman drove the unmarked police car.
     “Something sure seems odd about this rag,” Clancy said. “Not only does it not have a centerfold, the page numbering is all messed up.” He held the magazine open to the center. “Look here. Page thirty-eight is facing page forty-three.” He flipped back a few pages. “And page twenty-six is facing page thirty-three.”
     “Sounds like Lindmeyer got the pages out of order,” Ingman said. “Kind of makes you wonder if that sorry son was high on his own meth when he sent the fool thing to press.”
     For the first time since walking into the garage and learning about the centerfold, Gerald felt like he could relax. If Lindmeyer printed and bound the pages out of order, maybe no one would question the missing centerfolds. Now all he needed was for no one to question why the magazines weren’t on the store shelves.

     Donald Mandrake’s secretary did her best to protest their intrusion into the attorney’s office. Flashing his badge, Clancy opened the heavy oak door and led the way inside Mandrake’s private sanctum.
     The criminal attorney who lost the district attorney’s race three terms running to Gerald jumped to his feet. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked as he pushed a remote control button.
     Gerald glanced at the video screen and felt his stomach flop around again as he viewed a blurry image of Janet wearing a trench coat and sunglasses while standing at a convenience store’s checkout counter with a stack of magazines.
     He studied Mandrake’s reaction as Clancy explained how Gerald found Sandra’s pictures in the magazine. The furry in the man’s coal black eyes burned holes right through Gerald’s already stressed out stomach.
     “Just say the word, and I’ll have some uniformed officers confiscate every available copy of For His Eyes Only from the magazine racks in town,” Clancy said.
     Mandrake stared right into Gerald’s eyes and laughed. “You don’t need to. Janet Wharton already beat you to it.”
     Everyone stared at Gerald. It took every skill he learned in high school drama class to appear innocent.
     “She is your wife, isn’t she?” Mandrake asked, pointing at the video screen.
     “Yes.”
     Ingman grabbed the remote and rewound the tape to where Janet entered the store. “What’s going on here Wharton?”
     Gerald rubbed his forehead. “Mitch was making magazine deliveries last night and bought a copy. He called Janet when he saw something in the magazine that upset him. Then, without my knowledge, they secured nearly every copy Lindmeyer sent out for retail sale.”
     “So that’s why you wanted in on searching the printing press?” Clancy asked.
     Gerald nodded. “There’s been enough mud-slinging in this campaign. Right now Mandrake and I are even in the preliminary poles. Something like this would put an uncontrollable spin on the campaign. I don’t want that. What I do want is to see Lindmeyer prosecuted to the full extent of the law. If we do this properly, no one has to find out the sixteen-year-old in the photograph is Sandra.”
     “What if Lindmeyer’s attorney insists on putting Sandra on the stand?” Mandrake asked.
     Gerald studied Mandrake’s face. The man knew he was hiding something, but refrained from challenging him in front of Clancy and Ingman. “Like Clancy said earlier, Sandra’s a minor, we can protect her.” He grabbed the magazine Clancy carried and held it out to Mandrake. “But only you can intervene and get her away from sleaze balls like Lindmeyer.”

     Tuesday night after the voting poles closed, Gerald’s cell phone vibrated against his leg. He pulled it from his pocket and walked to the quietest corner of his chaotic office. “The tallies aren’t in yet, so you better not try gloating.”
     “I just wanted to thank you,” Mandrake said. “Sandra and I are making real progress. I think everything’s going to be okay.”
     “Glad to hear it.”
     “I also wanted to let you know that Janet was one fine looking college coed. Never saw a better looking Miss November. The way I figure it, paying my computer geek buddy to destroy the computer files of her picture makes us even. And, as an added bonus, if Lindmeyer gets convicted without Sandra’s name getting mentioned, I’ll mail you the last magazine copy.”
     A cheer went up as the election tally showed Gerald the winner by a thousand votes.
     He rubbed his stomach. An appointment with his doctor was the first thing he planned to put on his new judicial agenda. He was certainly going to need some heavy duty antacids.

(C) 2010 Reaona Hemmingway. All rights reserved.